No time for Relaxation

Welcome to the life of public relations where you run, run, run and never can catch a breath. I recently interviewed someone I worked side by side with this past summer. Her name is Becca Bornhorst. She works at GRand Solutions LLC, a public relations, marketing, and event planning firm. She went to Butler, studied journalism, and played women’s basketball there. Becca wasn’t planning on going into the PR field until she had her internships with the Indianapolis Fever and Butler basketball. Becca helped me tremendously this summer. Not only with pointers, but guiding me into more the PR side of IndyCar. One question I asked Becca was what is a daily week for you? She went into detail about a week during race season. In Becca’s words, “Race season starts in March and goes into September, you always have to be available and it’s not a typical work week. Expect to be working weekends, traveling is Thursday thru Sunday so you don’t get much of a break. When handling the PR for the team and driver you’re doing press releases, live social media, publicity events, and getting it all done in a timely manner.”

Working in the IndyCar field you get to do a lot of crazy and fun things. Becca talked about when they went to Toronto, Canada. Since Becca works at Grand one of their clients is Sarah Fisher Hartman Racing, now known as Carpenter Fisher Hartman Racing. She found a girl named Sarah Fisher who actually is from the show Degrassi. Becca stated its all about the cross promoting in something like this, plus it gave them a huge social media boost. Social media is a big part of Becca’s job, you constantly have to stay up with the latest trends and techniques. I can tell that it has changed dramatically, she agreed especially with the way a message is delivered. We now have many ways to talk through social media and it has helped us in many ways.

The next couple questions I asked Becca all were very similar. I asked how do you keep up with social media. She gave me very good ideas such as the website spinsucks, keeping up with the latest trends, and looking outside the bubble. Grand solutions allows their employees to refresh their knowledge or go gain more about a certain topic by paying for classes. We discussed a lot about how writing is crucial in this field. With Becca having a journalism major she did a lot of writing but wished she knew that there isn’t always a story, you have to find it. She explained that writing is huge and if you are just mediocre don’t even bother, get creative and find the story.

Finally concluding the interview Becca left me with three tips that I have already started to do. One: read and keep up with latest trends. Two: be confident never cocky, not only with yourself but clients. Build the relationships and trust. Three: improve skill sets, be knowledgeable, and grow with your career.

One thought on “No time for Relaxation”

Very good blog! Becca sounds very interesting, especially since she played basketball at Butler. The tips she left were some nice ones. Mullen preaches about building relationships and trust, to hear it from someone else’s mouth can show the importance!